The music of Blues is thin, almost skeletal in nature. It packs a tremendous force without having to rely on the “wall of sound” production style that is typical of less talented heavy rock bands. The formula seems simple: a couple guitars, a pumping bass, and thundering drums led by Connor Woods’ raucous vocals that shift seamlessly between wailing and screaming. But there is nothing simple about the music that this lethal combination produces.

The craft here is in the music’s brevity. Rather than sculpting lengthy tracks, packed with transitions and complex movements, Blues deconstruct each song down to a couple brief doses of intensity. Each is its own discrete experience but in effect, the ten tracks blend together to form thirty minutes of blistering rock.

Lyrically, Snakepit ranges from slick and contemplative (“The toil of repetition / The travails of deep-seeded trepidation / Have packed up / And been expelled from / Imagination” from “Say Nothing But Good of the Dead”) to somewhat asinine (“To feed these vultures / We give our own back / And they’re sorry because they’re sorry / These carrion carry-on bags can’t fit in their compartments” from “Sharp Clothes, Sharper Beaks”). From front to back, the words that are so violently expelled from Woods’ mouth don’t necessarily detract from the Blues experience, and with the exception of a couple of tracks, particularly “Then, Came the Snakepit” and “Sharp Clothes, Sharper Beaks,” the lyrics fit the caustic tones of the album.

Comparisons to Seattle heavyweights Botch are so apparent that the band “jokingly” refers to their style of music as “Botch n’ Roll.” However, Blues haven’t quite captured the level of frenetic dissonance achieved by their mathcore idols and while they still manage a sort of organized chaos, it is certainly a complement to mention them in the same sentence as Botch.

Snakepit adds another cog in the bone machine of the hardcore scene. Blues’ brand of systematic pandemonium, while not completely fresh or revolutionary, should definitely not be missed by fans of the genre. Pop in Snakepit and, as Blues advise on their MySpace page, “let the rock fuck you.”

Rocks Like

Every Time I Die and Botch on a friendly hunting expedition in New Jersey